Worst mothers in literature

If there is one person who personifies selflessness, un-wavering love and caring the first to come to mind should be your mother.  She cradled you for your fist nine months and held your hand though all the challenges life could throw at you.  Like with all true heroes books are littered with examples of hundreds of miracle moms from the classic Hester Prynne in the Scarlet Letter, who taught her daughter it's not shameful to have pride in ones self, to the more contemporary Mrs. Weasley the super poor super mom who took in Harry Potter like he was her own son.

 However not all the mother's in literature come out smelling like roses.  Abandonment, abuse, and adultery are the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the bottom of the barrel of fictional mothers.  To help you forget that time your mom forgot your birthday BookFinder.com has compiled a list of the 10 worst mothers in fiction. 

 The 10 worst mothers in Literature

 

10. Jeanettes Mother from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson

The main character is a young girl named Jeanette, who is adopted into a fundamentalist religious community.  As Jeanette grows up she discovers that she is a lesbian and finds love and happiness with another local girl.  When her psychotic mother finds out she publicly condemns the girl in front of their church/town and proceeds to tie the girl down and attempt two lengthy exorcisms, one via a 14 hour beating and another 36 hours locked in a parlor without food.

 

9. Sarah from Little Children by Tom Perrotta

Sarah joins the ranks of the litany of literary mothers who neglect their children to focus the self gratification of an affair.  While defiantly not the only woman in literature to commit this motherly sin she is getting singled out, I can only have ten on the list. 

 

8. Gertrude from Hamlet by Shakespeare

The fact that she marries her brother in law, who killed her husband, is proof that she's nuts but what really makes Gertrude a certifiable psycho is that despite all the adultery and killing she tries a little too hard to show compassion to Hamlet giving the kid a serious Oedipus complex.

7. Jocasta from Oedipus the King by Sophocles

Speaking of Oedipus... Everyone in this story is too stupid and selfish for words and Jocasta is no exception.  Too proud to kill her child to protect her kingdom, too stupid to not sleep with someone who is half her age when the gods have proclaimed she will commit incest, and soulless enough not to track down who killed her husband; she and the rest of her family are the perfect pawns to entertain the Greek gods.

 

6. Sophie Portnoy from Portnoy`s Complaint by Philip Roth

Alexander Portnoy is a deranged neurotic mess who, unable to enjoy sex, continues to seek release with more bizarre and deviant acts.  To Find the root of Alexander's issues one doesn’t have to look to far beyond his smothering, flirting, fussing mother who wouldn’t even let him use the bathroom without overseeing what he had accomplished.

 

5. The mother/stepmother in Hansel and Gretel by Brothers Grimm

She convinces her woodcutter husband to leave their kids out in the forest to die.  The children display intelligence and cunning to make it back to the house when the woman gets her husband to trudge them off even deeper into the forest.   Child labor would even have been a more motherly option, and it was practically fashionable in the 19^th century.  Abandonment = bad mothering, at least she snuffs it in the end.

 4. Norma Bates from Psycho by Robert Bloch

 While most of her emotional abuse and tirades about the evils of women and sex go on behind the scenes in this novel, the emotionally crippled murderous fruits of her labor take center stage.  Norma Bates defines the role of the psychotic mother in fiction

 

3. Margaret White from Carrie by Stephen King

Mother of Carrie White, Margaret was religious fanatic who believed nearly everything was sin and became physically and emotionally abusive to her daughter in an effort to get her to conform to her devout lifestyle, usually by locking her in a closet until she prayed for forgiveness.  That kind of mother would send anyone into a telekinetic fury.

 

2. Petal from The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx

She leaves her husband shortly after his parents commit suicide and runs off with her lover, but not before selling her daughters to a black market adoption agency... her only redeeming quality is that she gets killed off in a car crash so early in the book.

 

1. Corinne Dollanganger from Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews

After Marrying her father’s half-brother Corinne Dollanganger is widowed, and forced to return to her estranged family home with her four children.  Her mother agrees to let her move back in on the condition that Corinne hides the (illegitimate) children from Malcolm, her husband and Corinne’s father, until he dies.  Instead of working it out on her own she stuffs the children into an attic for years where they are generally ignored and become malnourished, delusional, incestuous and develop every social abnormality in the book.  Oh yeah she also tries to kill them off.

 

Honourable mention goes to Viviane Joan from Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells

Viviane (Vivi) really is a good mother but vanity gets the best of  her when she sees an interview with her daughter (Siddalee) in Time magazine where Siddalee expresses her opinions of an unhappy childhood.  Vivi proceeds to act like a four year old and goes berserk and launching a war against her daughter, refusing to talk to her and even taking down family photos.... way to suck it up and control the ol ego for the family Vivi.   Vivi would make this list except that by the end of the story both her and her daughter once again see eye to eye and really Vivi is just guilty of caring too much.

Comments

[Tom M]

I thought for sure I was going to see the mother from A Child Called It.

[suzy]

It's Weasley, not Wesley.

[Scott]

Tom: I kept it to works of fiction, so A Child Called It, and several other autobiographical books were kept off the list because they are non-fiction. Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit has been considered by some to be semi-autobiographical but it is still labeled as fiction so I decided to draw the line there. However what you say is true, the mother in A Child Called It was a monster.

Suzy: Thanks, I have corrected my error!

[James Van Eaton]

What a fun and twisted way to celebrate mothers day. Good list. I do have one point of contention though. Number 1, hands down, should be Ruth from Jack Ketchem's novel "the Girl Next Door." I got sick to my stomach reading that book, and the most disturbing thing is that Ketchem tells you, at the end, that the whole thing is based on a real person AND that he toned it down.

[Misrule]

The parents in Gennifer Cholodenko's "Notes from a Liar and her Dog" are the worst parents in children's literature. Great book—terrible parents.

[Misrule]

Also, can we have a follow up—worst FATHERS in literature?!

[Max Dunbar]

Eva Khatchadourian?

The worst fathers list is a great idea

[Gwyn Headley]

Lady Macbeth (Gruoch) deserves an honorable mention:
I have given suck, and know
How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me:
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums,
And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this.

Now THERE's a mother!

[Scott]

Shakespeare did have a knack for the evil mother didn't he.

Sounds good guys, by popular demand and in the name of gender equity I will do a worst fathers in fiction list next month. For Fathers day to be fair...

If you want to drop a suggestion you can do so at my name at bookfinder.com.

[Lazygal]

What, no Medea?

[lauren]

Ha! Eva Khatchadourian, definitely.

[blood in stool]

what a luvly compilation. At least we can all learn in the real world.

[Carl]

How about a terrible children list?
Veda from Mildred Pierce would be at the top for me

[tobes]

not to be too rude, but astringed? i'm pretty sure you meant estranged :O)

[Hajnal]

The worst mother in french literature: the dreaded Folcoche, in Hervé Bazin's Vipère au Poing (Viper in the Fist). The stuff of my childhood's nightmares.

[Amanda]

I really hope that some of these are facetious.... Also, please correct the litany of typos and grammar errors. Possessive apostrophes being missed out? "To" instead of "too"? Complete lack of hyphens being used where they definitely ought to be? *guh*

[jupiter]

Edna Pontellier from "The Awakening" was far worse than Sarah from Little Children , as far as examples of women indulging their own self-discovery over responsibilities of motherhood

[Yolanda Garfield]

I think you have to decide: evil, or just crazy? Because there's a difference. And I also think that crazy can do evil but the person is just sick, sick, sick. And why isn't there a list for Worst Fathers in Literature? That's a real question by the way.

[Liz]

where's Medea???

[Vince]

Hey Scott, this top ten list is fantastic. Norma Bates would be my #1, she is CRAZY!!! Plus I love Hitchcock movies so that pick has a soft spot with me. You can post this to our site http://www.toptentopten.com/ and link back to your site. We are trying to create a directory for top ten lists where people can find your site. The coolest feature is you can let other people vote on the rankings of your list.

[Mon]

what about Matilda's parents in the book by Roald Dahl? There are a lot of wicked step mothers in children's books and fairy tales

[Martineaux]

What about Kathy from "East Of Eden"? No maternal instinct, and probably no socially redeeming graces

[MarMar]

The most glaring omission I saw was Ingrid Magnussen from "White Oleander." Moms don't get much colder, manipulative, and self-centered than her.

[Julie]

My personal fave: Jeanette Walls' mom in The Glass Castle.

[Felicia]

What about "Bastard Out of Carolina"?